RE: Why 'Christ' Is Actually Our Heart & Religious Views of God Are Far From Accurate. We Are Tricked/Trapped Deliberately. God is Within.
Of course belief doesn't change the truth, but people who believe what is true are more beneficial to each other than people who believe falsehoods. As such it is advantageous to spread truth and to identify areas of agreement and disagreement for refinement.
Leonard Read has some worthwhile writings on this topic I only recently discovered through FEE's (very) brief collection of some of his work. I'd recommend it if you have the chance.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'essence' in defining God. Do you see both individual humans and God as atomic/indivisible beings? I see them as more fluid, with the delineation between 'individuals' based on shared character or values. So I see God as defined by perfection of character, and anything that conforms to perfect harmony becomes part of God. 'Scumbag' to me indicates a character that creates conflict and destroys harmony, and seems incompatible with that definition of God.
I have come to understand that beliefs always include a degree of error and furthermore they are literally a way of taking a thought and declaring it is true without actually knowing. For this reason I aim to remove all beliefs and so I am just left with thoughts and knowingness.
There is a continuum which we call life which involves individuation within creation into different beings - however, the 'medium' within which this occurs is also god. The medium is the feminine, magnetic will/mother and it is almost totally denied on Earth (especially in religion) so we are largely ignorant of it. Since humans have evolved in ignorance of this key aspect of who we are, we are left with a polarised reality where we strongly experience many different ideas of our relation to god. The best understandings I have on these topics have come from this book series. They explain that while all is one and each human is an extension of god - it is also true that there is a main 'focus' of the essence of god at the center of this universe so it is the case that there is an actual 'god being' but it is also true that we are parts of that being, in a sense, too.. So as an analogy, if we were to go 'there' it might be something like an octopus being visited by one of it's own tentacles that was hugely long and which rarely visited it's main body. Something like that ;)